


your heart in this game

by skateboardachoo



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - E-Sports, Found Family, Getting Together, M/M, from communities to writers to developers to pro e-sports athletes, my love letter to new york and cogs that keep the video game industry turning, soonyoung has never heard of a video game in his life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28086303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skateboardachoo/pseuds/skateboardachoo
Summary: It’s like this: Soonyoung doesn’t know how he ended being friends with Pro-Gamers(tm), let alone the who's-who of New York's gaming elite, when he’s allergic to just about every game controller ever put in his hands, but he is.But he's here and so is Jeon "DearStalker" Wonwoo, pro-Overwatch player.
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi
Comments: 21
Kudos: 63
Collections: Match Point: The SEVENTEEN Sports Fic Fest





	your heart in this game

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SVTSportsFest](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SVTSportsFest) collection. 



> so i spent six long months trying to figure out what i wanted this story to be and then two weeks ago it all finally clicked, however i didn't leave myself enough time to finish it in its entirety! and i do have plans on finishing it by Q3 2021. [abba voice] take a chance on me! 
> 
> so i am a hashtag Gamer(tm), but i don't super do OWL and i tried to teach myself a lot for this fic and asked soooo many friends to explain it to me. please take everything with a grain of salt and suspension! like i know nyxl does not have a townhouse and do not live in soho irl. it's all for a fun story. 
> 
> thank you sincerely to maya for the long phone calls, ariana for prompting this and then being like No More Spoilers in the modchat, kim and abigail for giving me the encouragement i needed, and of course to isi for betaing this for me at the last moment and being like You Are Good.
> 
> the title is from yu gi oh which like if you need quotes from literally every episode of the 4kids dub wikiquote has u covered.

**Overwatch League’s DearStalker Traded To New York Excelsior  
** _In a shocking trade, the world’s best DPS player leaves Seoul Dynasty  
_By Seungkwan Boo | @KingBooS | September 12, 20XX

This morning, New York Excelsior head coach Mark Tuan announced that Wonwoo Jeon, better known by his handle as DearStalker, will be joining NYXL for the 20XX season. This marks DearStalker’s surprise departure from Seoul Dynasty. 

This comes as a shock to many Overwatch League fans all over the world given Wonwoo “DearStalker” Jeon’s current claim to fame as the best DPS player in the world and hard carried Seoul Dynasty into winning last season’s finale match against London Spitfire. Even the saltiest of fans can admit DearStalker’s playstyle as Reaper is a force to be reckoned with, and to be feared. 

What’s even more of shock is NYXL saying goodbye to Jungkook “GCookie” Jeon as he will be joining Seoul Dynasty this season. When asked about the trade Tuan said “GCookie simply missed home. I get it. We loved having him here and I’m honored to have coached in my first season professionally coaching. GCookie leaving while we got DearStalker was best case scenario. We’ll miss the kid, dandelion’s already mopey but he’ll survive. I think GCookie’ll be happy to be playing with Vante again. Which is gonna be hell for everyone else this season with those two on the same team again. However, we’re excited to welcome DearStalker to his new home and I think he’ll fit right in with us here.”

Seungcheol “SCoups” Choi returns as NYXL’s team captain while Jihoon “woozi” Lee, Seulgi “orangebear” Kang, Yerim “violet” Kim, Changkyun “imx” Im, and the illustrious 97z of OWL: Yugyeom “dandelion” Kim, Bambam “bambam” Bhuwakul, and Jaehyun “dimple” Jung remain on the roster with the new addition of Wonwoo “DearStalker” Jeon. 

🎮

Soonyoung wishes the inevitable heat death of the universe would come sooner rather than later after that last class. He’s sweaty and gross, and the icy press of the wood flooring of his classroom does nothing to cool him down, physically nor emotionally. None of the teens in his hip hop class could focus, there was some sort of dating drama between Nick and Heidi apparently, and he heard the phrase “TikTok” one too many times in reference to something that _wasn’t_ Kesha’s smash hit single for it to be okay. 

He loves teaching dance and he’s beyond thankful he gets to do it at Alvin Ailey, but sometimes teens are too much.

Soonyoung flops his hand out, patting around to find his phone on the floor. He tries to flick up on the screen but his fingers are too sweaty and he squints too much at the camera for it to recognize his face and sighs.

“Hey Siri? Call Seokmin” 

“Calling Suckman.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I said, thank you,” he mumbles as the phone rings. He believes if he tries hard enough, he can train the American-English settings Siri to learn Korean. It’s been five years. She still hasn’t learned. It picks up on the third ring.

“Hey, dude,” Seokmin answers, tinny and kind of crackly with how bad the reception is in Soonyoung’s classroom.

“I’m thinking about quitting dance and picking up magic instead,” he says, and hears a rustle of sheets from the other end.

“The Gathering?”

“Ew, what? Hell no. I’m talking about sleight of hand, dog. Seems way more viable at this point, y’know?” Soonyoung responds, putting the phone on speaker to see if he can still do that thumb removing trick his uncle showed him when he was seven.

“Oh, thank god. I thought you were gonna abandon Yu-Gi-Oh for a second there, dog. That would’ve been way worse. Wow. Anyway. All right tell me more, Sigfried,” Seokmin prods and Soonyoung gives up on the thumb trick. He can’t figure it out.

“Shit, I forgot I could get tigers if I do magic. Wanna run away with me to Vegas, Roy?” 

“We hate Vegas and you’re not getting tigers. So why are you quitting dance?”

Soonyoung groans and flops onto his stomach, willfully ignoring how many times his spine pops in the process.

“Teens.” 

Seokmin hums in agreement on the other end, “So, wild fucking concept here, but instead of quitting dance and ruining your decade-long career, come to the preseason party with us tonight. Jeonghan got invited by Seungcheol which basically means we’re both invited.” 

Soonyoung thinks he hears Jeonghan in the distance yell “If Soonyoung is coming, tell him to invite Channie, I miss my baby! And get Jun to come too!”

“Oh, word. But dog,” Soonyoung starts. 

“What, palhoncho?”

“We’ve got Saturday Morning Yu-Gi-Oh in the AM, bright and early, we can’t be partying it up. I still have a bone to pick with that fucking twerp who got his mountain dew all over my deck last week,” Soonyoung says, restraining a groan as he finally drags himself up form the studio floor to get his stuff together. He debates whether or not to change out of his leggings and shorts before heading back to his apartment to change. 

“Boo hoo, it was your shitty duplicates deck anyway! C’mon, when was the last time we caused a ruckus at the team house?” Seokmin all but whines. 

“Uh, when they lost the play-offs and Seungcheol promptly banned us from coming over ever again after we decided to play combination Sexy Catan Drunken Twister—“

“Which is the greatest game ever created after Yu-Gi-Oh.”

“—I know, we’re geniuses, and said he didn’t want to deal with any scandals of any kind,” Seokmin finishes. Soonyoung takes one final glance around his classroom and tugs his backpack over his shoulder. That was a really good night. He doesn’t remember, like, any of it but he knows he had a good time because he woke up with a jersey wrapped up on his head like a turban and in blue and black eyeliner “OUR SLUTTY TEAM MASCOT” scribbled across his chest in Seulgi’s handwriting with his throat still burning from bottom-shelf tequila and a headache from hell. 

“Well, what Seungcheol doesn’t know won’t hurt him. So you’re coming right?” Seokmin asks. 

Soonyoung flicks the lights off and makes his way out of the Alvin Ailey building. 

“Should I bring the tequila?” he asks and Seokmin just whoops into his ear. 

🎮

It’s like this: Soonyoung doesn’t know how he ended up being friends with Pro-Gamers(tm), let alone those in the upper echelon of gaming notoriety, when he’s allergic to just about every game controller ever put in his hands, but he is. Actually, that’s a lie. He knows exactly how. So sure, in two years, he not only went from being a dance student to a dance teacher at one of New York’s finest dance academies but also went from casually playing Yu-Gi-Oh on the weekends to being a well-respected and internationally renowned player. 

But most importantly, he went from not knowing Yoon Jeonghan to knowing Yoon Jeonghan. 

Jeonghan knew anybody who was anybody. If you played video games in New York, Jeonghan was going to worm his way into your existence and attach himself like a very flamboyant, but very sexy, leech. 

So when Seokmin told him at Thursday night Yu-Gi-Oh at XenoZero that he managed to score a date with “that scary but pretty World of Warcraft streamer who lives in Hell’s Kitchen, yeah the one who touched my butt at the Konami party, shut up yes I was fine with it and he asked before touching, after he said he liked the slope of my nose and to show him my blue-eyes white dragon sometime” never did Soonyoung imagine it would lead to eventually getting texts from “the best Mercy main in the world” (whatever that means) asking him for his favorite green smoothie recipe and where he got his leggings that made his ass look like _that_. 

Best Mercantile mainline in the world or not, he thinks Bambam is adult enough to use Google like everyone else if he wants free health food advice. Just add peanut butter powder, a banana, and vanilla extract to make it taste good, duh everyone knows that. His fake Lululemon employee discount card on the other hand? Well, Bambam will just have to open up Photoshop and find a professional laminator himself.

Soonyoung doesn’t super know what to expect from tonight, but he figured some tight black jeans and a breezy patterned button up would be just fine. He’ll probably be the best dressed there, unless Minghao shows up and then all hope for him being style icon of the day would be lost. Soonyoung can’t remember the last time he saw anyone living in that townhouse not in a team jersey or sweatpants. 

The absurdly massive and lavish townhouse the Overwatch League purchased for New York Excelsior to live in is thankfully only a twenty minute walk from Soonyoung’s shoebox apartment in the Bowery, so he decides the enjoy the last clinging bits of summer mugginess and the just barely turning of the trees from the midsummer greens to the pumpkin orange of Autumn and walk over. 

Soonyoung doesn’t immediately wrinkle his nose stepping out of his apartment. The smell of hot garbage is finally fading away with the last vestiges of the summer heat. He pops into his bodega at the corner, stopping to scratch Dorito the Bodega Cat underneath his chin, and buys the most mid-tier bottle of tequila they have.

He shoots off a quick text to the “Dance Babes” group chat to see if Chan and Jun are already there and judging from Chan’s “save me” and blurry photo of Jun shoveling a handful of sour gummy worms into his mouth and dabbing, they’re already there. 

It’s been awhile since he’s been over—well, allowed over—since the play-offs. Seungcheol really all but banned him and Seokmin from coming over, as if Jeonghan wasn’t a co-conspirator and the person who wrote the rules to Sexy Catan (“If you trade for resources you have to take off a piece of clothing. No sheep for you if you won’t take something off”), he still had best friend privileges that Soonyoung and Seokmin simply do not and will never possess.

But besides being banned, the team was apparently going all out for preseason training and were simply too busy practicing to invite anyone over. Also Mark said no more parties for a month after the Sexy Catan incident but that was beside the point. That was _forever_ ago. Borderline ancient _history_.

It’ll be nice to have the entire gang all back together, and Jungkook said he would FaceTime in just to say hi to everyone. It’s a welcome distraction.

Soonyoung approaches the townhouse, white New York gothic exterior with the NYXL flag proudly waving against a sunset purple sky, giddy, and hops up the front steps. He rings the buzzer and pats his butt pocket to make sure his deck that won him the Regional Qualifiers was still back there in case he and Seokmin were able to bully Jaehyun into learning again. 

The intercom crackles to life and a “Oh, who is it?” sing songs out, with a muffled, “Jeonghan, stop trying to answer the door, this isn’t even your fucking _house_ ,” sounding suspiciously like Seungcheol. 

“It’s time to d-d-d-duel, baby!” he yells into the speaker and there’s an affronted “Hey!” and the sound of the door unlocking while Seungcheol lamely says “This is a Soonyoung-free zone. Go home, Soonyoung.” Soonyoung opens it fast before Seungcheol has the opportunity to lock it again and he cackles into the speaker. A whiny Seungcheol-sounding “Nooooo,” filters through.

The first floor of the townhouse isn’t crowded, but there are enough bodies in the room that the air conditioning is working overtime, and the swirling mix of Korean and English and Japanese and Mandarin means everyone is yelling over everyone in order to be heard. 

Soonyoung weaves his way through the throng of anybody who’s anybody in the gaming scene of New York City trying to get to the team’s ridiculously nice kitchen to drop off his offering, but gets bro-thunked on the back by Yuto. And where there is Yuto means there’s a Hyunggu. And yep, there he is. Soonyoung is snatched away swiftly and twirled around by Hyunggu, already red-wine giggly and whining about wanting to dance and how none of these dumb stinky gamers ever want to dance. 

“We can dance in a little bit when I don’t have a bottle of Patròn in my hands, Hyunggu-yah,” Soonyoung chides, but indulges Hyunggu by spinning him out into Wooseok, who grabs him around the waist and bows down to press a kiss to the top of his head. Hyunggu looks up to give Wooseok and then Yuto matching dopey, lovesick smiles. They’re gross, but cute. 

“Okay, but bring shots back with you,” he sing-songs, even though Yuto and Wooseok are sending him pleading looks of “please, do not do that,” from behind Hyunggu’s head. Soonyoung pats Hyunggu on the cheek and then reaches up to Yuto and Wooseok and pats their cheeks too.

“Don’t you guys have to open the shop tomorrow?” Soonyoung asks. Hyunggu starts making grabby hands at the bottle of tequila and Soonyoung holds it just out of his reach. Yuto quirks an eyebrow. Wooseok struggles to hold back a wine-drunk Hyunggu.

“And don’t you have a release event to play in tomorrow morning?” Yuto fires back. Soonyoung just makes finger guns at the three of them and goes back to heading towards the kitchen.

There’s Mingyu, of course, cooking up a storm in the kitchen, almost everyone giving him space to whip up huge platters of japchae, roasted sweet potatoes, beef gai lan, and chicken wings, like they couldn’t order out and put it on the OWL company tab and like he hasn’t been cooking all day for work anyway. He’s frowning at a bright red sauce in the pan, completely unaware of the chaos around him. 

That won’t do. 

There are many things in this cruel world that shouldn’t happen according to Soonyoung. Up at the top of the list being twelve year olds allowed at pre-release events, the Capezio flagship store being out of jazz shoes in his size (it’s not his fault they keep assigning him to the late night jazz classes when he doesn’t want them), and, like, puppy mills. But Mingyu frowning is somewhere in the top two. Soonyoung drops off his bottle with a clatter against the other bottles of questionable liquor and mixers on the island. 

He sidles up next to Mingyu, greeting him with a quick knead to his shoulders, and Mingyu startles with a gasp and hand pressed to his chest in surprise. The wooden spoon drops and slides in the red pan sauce. He turns to yell, face puffed up in annoyance, but it melts away realizing it’s Soonyoung. 

“You are so lucky I missed seeing you at D&D last week or else your ass would be grass, Kwon Soonyoung,” Mingyu scolds. Soonyoung beams at him and gets on his tippy toes to press a fleeting kiss onto Mingyu’s cheek. Mingyu rolls his eyes and leans to drop one on the cheek Soonyoung already has tilted up for him. 

Soonyoung loves Mingyu a lot. He lets Soonyoung get away with most things. Unless it’s arguing the semantics of spell descriptions and cantrips at their weekly gossiping-about-relationship-problems disguised as D&D sessions, and then Mingyu will physically shut him up by slapping a big palm over Soonyoung’s mouth, but that’s neither here nor there. 

Soonyoung wraps an arm around Mingyu’s waist and rests his head against Mingyu’s arm. Mingyu grimaces and fishes out the saucy wooden spoon. Call him a flake, but his desire to listen to Seungkwan imply he wants to fuck Vernon over his editing bay via convoluted bard and tavern metaphors simply was nonexistent that day.

“Hmm, missed you too, Mingus. How bad were the ‘you can come into my tavern at any time you like’ and ‘you can crack this barrel of ale open’ quips this time?” Soonyoung asks. 

“So bad. Were we ever that bad? Be honest. ‘Cause it’s painful witnessing it,” he asks. He wipes the spoon handle on his apron and goes pack to stirring the sauce, frown gone now, and slings his arm comfortably around Soonyoung’s shoulder. If there’s one thing he missed about his relationship with Mingyu all those years ago (“It’s been two years, Soonyoung. Two years. You act like we’re both widowed,”) it’s how warm and solid Mingyu is. Even though Soonyoung used to overheat almost immediately. Minghao is a lucky man. 

“Probably, but we’re both so nice to look at. We were doing everyone a favor.” Mingyu snorts at that. 

“So what’s the mood on the vibes tonight?” Soonyoung asks. It’s important information. The vibes at the team house are always all over the place. Some nights it’s lazy, couch potatoing, with wine and takeout and a Smash Bros round robin. Others it’s raucous, all the boiling repressed gamer energy and stress from the season and training finally bubbling up and flipping the lid off the pot and there’s someone (Bambam and a convinced Jihoon usually) doing TikTok dances completely trashed for, well, the team’s TikTok page. 

Mingyu looks over his shoulder and tosses a cursory once-over of the ground floor. Soonyoung follows suit. They probably look like the meerkats he likes to watch on Animal Planet when he’s waiting for a big cat documentary to come on.

Towards the front of the home, a drunk Hyunggu gets his boyfriends to move their limbs in a way that resembles dancing but abandons them for Chan shimmying and sashaying his way over to Hyunggu to rescue him. 

The playlist is good at least. Soonyoung suspects Vernon has something to do with it. Another song shuffles and it’s Wonder Girls. Oh, he’s got it bad, and he probably has no idea.

There’s a crowd gathered around the huge TV, games media writers and streamers and NYXL members piled on couches and tucked into each other, phones out playing a Jackbox game. Seokmin catches up his eye and sticks his tongue out at Soonyoung and from his position tucked underneath Seokmin's arm, Jeonghan shouts that it’s not fair ‘cause the answer is in Cantonese and a tall man/boy?, not as freakishly tall as Wooseok but still tall, gestures at the screen and yells, “And you think I can read Hangul? On a good day?” 

But, all the way back by the garden side of the townhouse, are huge Lovesacs in black and blue chenille with the more elegant and refined of their sort reclined in some makeshift salon in the midst of the party. Minghao is stretched out, all long lines and YSL, pouring a cab sav for himself, two of his colleagues, Joshua, Vernon, and a mysterious tall stranger who’s swimming in a hoodie. He’s got a mop of curly hair and glasses. A jawline to die for. There are shaky hands gripping the stem of his glass harder steadying it. He blinks wide and then scrunches in his nose in a laugh at something Joshua says. Wow, that’s really kind of him.

Soonyoung may not know what exactly all the people here _do_. He knows what streaming is. He knows Jeonghan and Joshua have hundreds of thousands of viewers watching them play games Monday through Friday. They make bank on it and get invited to fancy industry events. He can recognize some of the games they play when they all hang out and he’s been known to place eleventh in Mario Kart from time to time. He definitely does not know what the lore on Overwatch is and no matter how many times Jihoon and Seungcheol try to explain it as plainly as possible when they meet up for drinks at that overpriced Barcade place off of Seventh, it’s none of his business.

But Soonyoung has a way of remembering people, new and old alike, loving them and cherishing them, liking how they all slot together even if he has no idea why click-speed and graphics card specs matter so much. He’s not even sure what a graphics card even _is_. But he remembers everyone who’s connected to any of them. He likes it, this weird unlikely family he’s found for himself here in New York, so far from Gyeonggi. 

Soonyoung does know he would absolutely remember _him_. Make it a point to, even.

Soonyoung gulps and turns back to Mingyu.

“Who’s _that_ guy.” It’s delivered less like a question and more like an incredulous accusation veiled in deep rooted curiosity and astonishment. Maybe a little bit of wonder. He’s going to be a little miffed if they were keeping a Hot Boy away from him.

However, ”How many bananas do you have to eat to get radiation poisoning,” is what Soonyoung receives in response. It’s a valid question.

Soonyoung and Mingyu whip their heads around to see Junhui holding up four banana peels balled up in his fist. He’s got his lucky Tamagotchi running Doom on it hanging by a lanyard around his neck. The lanyard is Gucci.

Mingyu’s chest puffs up in frustration, “Wen Junhui, I am slaving over a hot stove and you’re filling up on bananas. What’s _wrong_ with you?” 

“It’s gotta be like, at least fifty right? Fifty bananas sounds correct,” Soonyoung confirms. Jun nods his head empathically, taking Soonyoung’s suggestion as fact. Mingyu stares at them like they’re insane.

Something like courage settles deep in Soonyoung’s stomach. He has two functioning eyes, sometimes three if his third eye is open and he’s particularly welcoming to enlightenment that day, and there is a beautiful boy emphatically gesturing at whatever terrible opinion Joshua decided to voice. He’s going to say hi.

Mingyu finishes glaring at Junhui, who is not particularly bothered by this, and drops the peels on the island right next to the sweet potatoes. With a banana-slimy hand he checks in on Doom Guy. A grimace of disgust crosses Mingyu’s features and he clicks his tongue. He chooses to turn his attention back to Soonyoung.

“That’s Jeon Wonwoo, I think his username is DearStalker. He's their new teammate. Kwannie just wrote an article on him last month, when we all found out Jungkookie was moving back home. But he moved in recently,” Mingyu says and dumps a waiting bowl of tteokbokki into the sauce. 

“And y’all were hiding him?” Soonyoung responds, but with his eyes glued to Jeon Wonwoo. 

Soonyoung has this thing, this problem, this affliction where he decides if he wants something, he wants it _now_. Immediacy is just barely fast enough. His emotions work in a flash pan, but they linger like a bullet wound. And he wants Jeon Wonwoo.

Even from halfway across the first floor and behind thick rimmed glasses, Soonyoung can catch the sparkle of Wonwoo’s eyes when his face splits into a wide grin and Soonyoung’s chest feels like a Gogurt tube being gripped with force, like that Twitter account Seokmin sends him photos from. 

“Hey, don’t blame me! I’ve been working on that Zelda shoot for like, three weeks now and this is the first time I’ve been outside of my apartment and work in what feels like eons,” Mingyu says on the defense. He reaches across Soonyoung to grab a tiny bowl of sliced up scallions.

“I’m gonna go say hi,” Soonyoung decides. Mingyu takes in his besotted eyes practically dripping honey and the set of his jaw and groans.

“I know that look. Please, Soonyoung, I love you, but don’t be weird. Please don’t be weird,” Mingyu pleads. He stirs his worry into the simmering pan of tteokbokki. A fleck of sauce kicks up onto his apron. 

“Be yourself!” Junhui says around a mouthful of banana. 

“I like his advice, I’m going with Junhui here on this one,” Soonyoung concludes. 

“Where do you keep finding bananas?” Mingyu asks, pleading and strung out. The spoon slides into the sauce again.

With a deep steadying breath, Soonyoung takes a step towards the Lovesacs with Junhui’s cackle chiming above the din. Shoulders squared, tits on a pedestal, toes pointed, he has an impression to make.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry i spent more time having mingyu jun and hoshi talk about radiation poisoning than hoshi actually talking to wonwoo f in the chat
> 
> [twit](https://www.twitter.com/skateboardachoo) // [cc](https://curiouscat.me/wizardshinwon)


End file.
